Prague Travel Guide

The National Gallery in Prague is the Czech Republic's largest art institution, with its flagship venue in the monumental functionalist Trade Fair Palace. The collection spans nineteenth-century art to the present, pairing Czech modernists such as Mucha and Kupka with Monet, Picasso and Rodin. Light-flooded halls and a vast atrium make browsing genuinely enjoyable, and for travellers who want more than castles and squares, it offers the deepest dive into Czech art anywhere in the city.

Housed in a neo-Renaissance former waterworks right by the Vltava near the Charles Bridge, the Bedřich Smetana Museum celebrates the father of Czech nationalist music. Manuscripts, letters and personal items trace his life, while listening stations let you play excerpts from Má vlast, including the swirling Vltava. Between the riverside terrace, the elegant architecture and the music itself, it is an essential stop for anyone who believes Prague is best understood through sound.

Grévin Praha brings the famous Parisian wax museum tradition to Celetná Street, steps from the Old Town Square. Several hundred lifelike figures range from Czech kings and cultural icons like Kafka to world leaders and movie stars, and you can get right up close for photos. Themed sets with light and sound effects include scenes from Prague's history, making it a fun pick for families and a reliable rainy-day option before strolling on to the astronomical clock.

The Klaus Synagogue is the largest house of worship in Prague's Jewish Quarter, its Baroque interior both solemn and graceful. Next door, the Ceremonial Hall once belonged to the Jewish Burial Society and now displays artefacts tied to Jewish mourning customs. Both belong to the Jewish Museum circuit, with exhibits on festivals, rituals and daily life, right beside the famously layered Old Jewish Cemetery. Together they form the key to understanding centuries of Josefov's history.

Střelecký ostrov, or Shooters Island, is a small green isle in the Vltava named after the marksmen's club that once practised here. Today it is a beloved riverside escape with lawns, old trees and a waterside pub, and its banks frame postcard views of the National Theatre and Vyšehrad. Free to enter and easy to reach, it is the perfect breather between sights, whether you come for a picnic or for the golden light on the river at dusk.

Prague honours its most famous literary son in striking ways. The most eye-catching is David Černý's kinetic monument: an eleven-metre head of Franz Kafka built from dozens of rotating stainless-steel layers that align and dissolve, a fitting metaphor for the shifting identities in his fiction. A second, quieter statue in the Old Town's Dušní street shows Kafka riding on the shoulders of an empty suit, near the Spanish Synagogue. Seen together, the two sculptures trace a city-wide homage to a writer who never really left.